Physicians for Human Rights believes human rights are absolutely central to HIV prevention, care, and treatment—indeed, to every facet of the epidemic. Bio-medial, behavioral and human rights approaches much come together to stop the spread of AIDS. PHR and our constituents conduct outreach, education and advocacy to make sure the world adopts integrated, scientific, rights based prevention polices and programs—I’m happy to answer questions about our work and why human rights is so central to fighting the epidemic.  

In the mean time, there are so many great resources out there about human rights and AIDS prevention: I wanted to provide links to a few of the best and encourage other participants to add to this so we have a strong list of resources by week’s end. 

1.       OSI and colleague organization have a fabulous—you can find it at. PHR has endorsed this, and your organization can too—just check out their website for more details http://www.soros.org/initiatives/health/focus/law/articles_publications/publications/human_20071017 .

2.       Anyone interested in AIDS should check out al of the general human rights documents by the UN—see http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/index.htm.

3.       The Un also has published International Guidelines on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights—see these at http://data.unaids.org/Publications/IRC-pub07/jc1252-internguidelines_en.pdf

4.       HIVAIDS and Human Rights in a Nutshell is a great white paper by the FXB Center at Harvard School of Public Health. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/fxbcenter/HIVAIDS_and_HRinNutshell-Webversion1.pdf

5.       Prevention is about women's rights: the right to education (studies have shown girls with higher education levels in sub Saharan Africa are less likely to get HIV), employment, to inheritance, to integrated health care, to family planning and reproductive health services, to freedom from violence and early marriage—and more. See PHR’s Healthy Women=Health Rights platform at http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/hiv-aids/issues/health-rights-healthy-women.html for our vision on making the health care system recognize women’s rights—many other groups d amazing work on HIV and education, domestic violence, land ownership, employment and more. Prevention programs that work in Africa have some behavior change and education component—but many also have an income generating component, showing how economic rights are so integral to health rights.

6.       Prevention is about the right to information and scientific advancement for IDUs. See PHR’s briefings and fact sheets on the intersection of human rights and harm reduction (http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/hiv-aids/issues/hiv-prevention-for-drug-users.html), which were eloquently outlined by Intercambios.

7.       On another human rights note, physicians and activists who work on HIV prevention remain at risk of persecution. One case in point is that of Drs. Arash and Kamiar Alaei, two Iranan brother who work on harm reduction who were detained in Iran in June and whose whereabouts remain unknown. PHR’s Colleagues at Risk Program does advocacy to support these kinds of cases—and you can add your voice by visiting www.IranFreetheDocs.org and signing the petition there for their release. 

I’d love to hear more about participants’ perspectives on human rights and HIV/AIDS prevention, about new resources, about articles or IEC materials, about how you integrate human rights and HIV in trainings, etc.